Mental Poisons, Relationships, and the Importance of Meditation

Orgyen Trinley Dorje, the 17º Gyalwang Karmapa, is the holder of the Karma Kagyu lineage (a Buddhist tradition spanning more than 900 years) and a guide for millions of meditation practitioners around the world. He is recognized for his environmental activism and as a prominent voice in the struggle for women's rights. He is also considered a likely successor to the Dalai Lama. Currently, the Karmapa resides at Gyuto Monastery in India, following his dramatic escape from Tibet in 2000. Over the past year, he has been offering teachings especially at the Karma Kagyu seat in the West, in New York, USA.

Below is a transcription of some of his valuable teachings with practical applications for daily life.

Mental Poisons

Generally speaking, there are two ways to work with the poisons of the mind.

At first, for beginners, we try to escape the mental poisons by not being drawn to them, by sidestepping them and not engaging with them too much. We try to run from them. That is the first stage, where you must confront them and work directly with them.

The second stage is to actually fight against them, to wage a kind of war against these poisons. Then there is still a third stage, which comes when your wisdom becomes much clearer and stronger. At that point you use skillful means.

At this point you are much stronger and can truly confront, wage war, attack the negative emotions. You find a way to use them as friends, not as enemies. You use them in such a way that they can be very skillfully turned to your advantage.

The Importance of Meditation and Compassion

We need to give our mind a rest. We need to bring peace and joy. When we set aside time to meditate or to engage in certain practices, it is to train our minds to bring peace and rest. Otherwise, our mind cannot rest and we cannot find peace. There is so much distraction and so much turbulence. It is as if our mind were sick, running a fever, catching a cold or something like that. It does not act in a peaceful way. So this kind of training, this formal practice to bring our mind rest and peace, is very important.

If you say, “I will be compassionate,” that is not enough. This is not a situation where you can say, “Okay, I will do this,” and then it happens. It has to be based on a clear understanding of why and how that is so important.

When you develop this understanding of the importance of compassion and why compassion is necessary, then perhaps you arrive at a place where you have more clarity about what your choices are. If I am compassionate, it will be like this; if I am not, it will be like that.

Perhaps it is more important and better to really feel the need to be compassionate. That is when you need to decide: “Yes, this is right. I really should be compassionate.”

Attachment and Relationships

When we are truly attached to something, it is very difficult to separate our mind from it.

For example, anger comes and goes; it is not always present. But attachment is something that is more or less continuously present. It is something we cannot easily separate ourselves from, and therefore it disturbs our peace of mind.

There is a Tibetan saying: “If you touch it, it burns your hand; if you do not touch it, it breaks.” It is like a hot pot. If you hold it, it burns your hand; if you drop it, it breaks. So it is a bit like that. Everything we do with attachment remains problematic.

It is important to discover why and how attachment and clinging arise.

Now, for example, if we see something we are attached to, something we really like, then we see the positive side, the good side of that thing, almost excessively. We do not see the negative side. When we are attached to something, we cannot separate our mind from the good things we see in it, and they become one thing.

When something we are attached to appears in our mind, it seems like something really desirable. In fact, unless it appears as something really desirable, it will not attract our mind. So desire and the appearance of the object of your attachment generally arise together. You see the object of your attachment as something very desirable. For that reason, you feel: “I cannot bear to be separated from it.” Thus, you can see that attachment or desire is something that is not free.

For example, people make things desirable because they want to sell something to you. They try to figure out what will most attract your mind. They try to discover what thing will create such a strong desire in you that you have to buy it, and you do not even care how much you have to spend on it. So when your mind likes something so much, you have a very strong craving for it, you want to obtain it, you have to buy it, no matter what.

The main issue with attachment is that you are dominated by the object to which you are attached. There is a very tight grip, a strong feeling that you cannot let go. But with compassion and loving-kindness it is not like that. It is a much more open and free feeling, something very warm.

Most of you are heads of households or homemakers, so all of you have to face the challenge of attachment. When we say that attachment is something negative, that does not mean that every kind of desire or attachment is something bad, that everything you are attached to should be abandoned. Sometimes people think: “I should not be attached to things, so I have to give up everything and abandon everyone.” That is wrong. That is not what we are saying. We are saying that we have to base our relationships and attachments on things for the right reasons. It happens that you get pulled into something and then you cannot get out of it anymore. That brings problems, suffering, and pain. That is not what we want.

There is a story I remember: they say that once there was a couple who were not getting along very well together; they were not even speaking to each other. One day, the man wrote a note to his wife saying: “Please wake me up at 8 o'clock.” Then he went to sleep, and of course he overslept. It was already 10 o'clock when he woke up. Then he found another note next to his note, and it said: “You should wake up now. It is already 9:30…” This means that we should not avoid relationships, but relationships should not become a source of suffering. They can be a source of great happiness. The way we understand things makes all the difference.

Aversion, Anger, and How to Shift Attention Away from These Feelings

Aversion and aggression are expressions of anger. It becomes very obvious, because when you feel anger and aggression, you express it very clearly, whether through your face, your speech, or your body language. The way you act becomes harsher and less careful, so it is not difficult to recognize feelings of anger or aggressiveness when they arise. It is easy to perceive these emotions.

The way we work with this is through patience. This is the antidote we have to use.

Sometimes we have this feeling: “This person did something negative to me. They insulted me. They did this and that,” and we respond by thinking: “I have the right to be angry. It is okay. I have the right to be aggressive for this reason or that reason.” When you see things this way, it is very difficult to deal with aggression. I find this very difficult to deal with because you think it is a very reasonable response, and that you really need to react with that aggression or anger. But there are many different ways to work with anger, and sometimes you cannot work directly with it using your own understanding alone.

It is better that you have a clear understanding of the reasons why you should not be angry or aggressive, but sometimes it can help if you can think of reasons why you should not be angry, make some excuses in some way.

Suppose I have a very genuine teacher, and every time I become angry or aggressive, I think of the teacher and say to myself: “This teacher told me not to get so angry.” If I can shift my attention in this way, it sometimes helps. It can have a good effect and really helps me let my anger go away.

If I remember instructions from good books and teachings from masters who are true and inspiring and who have inspired me, if I can think of them, they will also help me.

Normally, when we become angry about something, our mind is completely focused on that point, on that personal incident, so our anger becomes stronger and stronger. Then we feel that we have to do something about it, that we have to act. Anger can go in many directions and toward ourselves as well.

Instead of concentrating on that specific thing, if we can shift our attention, as we do with other things, and say: “I am angry about this; this is not right. But there is that other thing; that is not right either,” if I can focus on many different things and aspects, then, in some way, my anger becomes smaller, because that is not solid.

It is about not being focused on one single thing. After some time, your mind moves evenly across many things you are angry about, so you no longer need to stay angry about one particular thing.

It is very important that we try to shift our focus, our concentration, from a single point to many other things. If we then generate a compassionate mind, there will be many benefits and many positive things.